I whipped around to see a gigantic bull moose emerge from the brush across the creek. His lady friend trotted off down the creek bed to graze, but he picked his way slowly towards us down the opposite bank, maybe 30 feet away. He had everyone's full attention. "Maybe we should back up a bit," someone suggested. As we were all sort of generally agreeing that might be a good idea, the moose shifted gears, surging up the near bank directly towards us in a burst of speed, snorting and shaking his giant head. We emptied that picnic table in zero seconds flat.
I raced for the car, pushing Theo ahead of me, expecting to feel hot moose nostrils on the back of my neck at any second. I'm sure enormous antler shadows fell across us as we fled. "Get in the car!" I screamed at Theo, who had stopped to look back. He pointed behind me at the table, where Lucy had decided to stand her ground and Grandpa Guy hovered, ready to moose wrestle if necessary. The moose stopped about 10 feet from the picnic table, trying to work out how to maneuver his giant antlers between two small trees. "Lucy, MOVE!" I shouted. "At least put a tree between him and you," suggested Grandpa Guy. As Lucy reluctantly acquiesced, the moose decided that fighting Dad, Lucy, and inconveniently placed trees just wasn't worth the hassle. He turned and ambled off down the creek to join his lovely bride.
We all filtered back to the table like slowly deflating balloons. "What just happened?!" someone asked. "I think a moose almost killed Lucy," someone else replied. I wasn't sure what to say, a little chagrined that I'd left my Dad to defend my child while I ran for the hills. Fortunately Lucy didn't seem to have noticed. "Mom, are you going to eat that blackberry?" she asked.
